The flow of information between individuals responsible for various technical and/or administrative functions within an organization is typically facilitated by weekly or monthly meetings, email communications, and through individual conversations. As a result, the flow of information for an individual in the organization will typically include: (1) collecting relevant information 10 generated by other individuals having related job functions; (2) generating information 12 relevant to a respective job function; (3) generating a report 14 summarizing respective information generated; and (4) meeting with other individuals 16 to report or transfer information. This type of information flow scheme is illustrated in FIG. 1.
For organizations comprising many individuals which generate information pertinent to defining, developing, and/or managing the organization's business or portfolio, the above described information flow methods can be extremely time consuming and difficult to coordinate. As a result, the use of these information flow methods can result in the ineffective management or mismanagement of the assets and portfolio of the organization. Therefore, a new method and system are needed for managing information generated by numerous individuals, typically using a plurality of application tools.
One example of this need is in coordinating petroleum operations, wherein it is important that each person in an asset development team has access to the most current information from not only his or her area but from all members of the team. Functions related to defining and developing a hydrocarbon-producing portfolio are typically separated into groups, referred to as functional groups. Each functional group comprises one or more individuals responsible for particular technical and/or administrative functions related to the development and management of the portfolio. The timely and accurate flow of information between these groups is important to efficient operations. Prior art business flow between these groups in the petroleum industry is based on paper data or electronic spreadsheets generated by individuals for their own use and located in various folders and drives on different computer systems. As a result, frequent business meetings are usually required to transfer this information between persons who perform the various business functions involved in the operation of the assets in the portfolio. At these meetings the various individuals typically discuss the status of their work while the other professionals note aspects of the reports that affected their functions and the duties they performed. This type of environment creates communication problems and is dependent upon human rapport and availability.
Other types of data flow known in the art include having individuals fill out selected forms used by various departments within the organization operating the portfolio. For example, the individuals may include Geologists and Geophysicists who generate drilling prospects, Regulatory and Right-of-Way professionals who ensure compliance with laws and regulations affecting the operation, Landmen who ensure that lease obligations are met by drilling prospects and existing wells, Drilling engineers who design wells to be drilled on the prospects, Financial Analysts who plan budgets for asset development, and Managers who decide how best to allocate financial resources to develop assets according to the organization's financial goals.
In large operations, such as those that involve the drilling of large numbers of wells for fixed resources (limited number of rigs, limited budgets, other capital limitations) in a certain time frame, efficiency of time, equipment use and resources is important. In this type of environment, the traditional method of conducting meetings to discuss the status of several wells can be inefficient and difficult to coordinate because mutually agreeable times must be found when everyone involved in the operation can meet. Further, the effectiveness of such meetings is largely based on human rapport. Additionally, meetings involving several operations can be time consuming, in that time is spent discussing issues which relate to only a few individuals, having each person to present reports, and answering questions from one or two individuals in a group setting. In many cases, these meetings consume valuable time that could have been better spent working in the office or field.
Prior art tools used in this type of environment typically include a number of specific application programs that are used by the various individuals in the asset development organization. Each of the applications is typically specific to an individuals role and function. For example, Geologists and Geophysicists have applications for interpreting 3-dimensional seismic surveys, and for indicating prospects thereon generated as a result of the interpretation. Reservoir Engineers have applications available which provide well test analysis and production forecasting. Drilling Engineers have available well design tools which facilitate design of wells to be drilled given formation parameters and depths to selected targets. Landmen have available applications which facilitate tracking of petroleum lease obligations, to make it easier to ensure that all obligations have been accounted for in the organization's business activity. These are not meant to be an exhaustive list of applications and their users in petroleum organizations, but are provided only to illustrate the complexity of asset development organizations.
A limitation of the applications known in the art is that each generates unique data sets. Most of the applications known in the art do not provide any facility for data generated by one application to be used in any other application other than by manual entry such as by keyboard, manually operated download or other non-automatic device. Therefore there is a need for a system and method which provide automatic update of data commonly used in a number of different applications across an organization in order to reduce the need to repetitively enter data, or provide other forms of manual data transfer.